Chasing Away the Darkness
by Aqualover5711
Summary: Post-Thor, Pre-Avengers AU. Darkness can consume even the strongest of hearts, and for Loki it is a force that threatens to destroy everything. When he crashes to earth after a three month fall, he finds his path towards redemption is going to be a long one. With the help of the Avengers can Loki conquer the darkness within and an evil that wants this power for themselves?


**Author's Note: I have other stories I should be updating, but I have so many ideas buzzing through my head and they're driving me crazy :P. I can't help but start these stories and hope one day I can actually finish them. This starts Post-Thor, Pre-Avengers after Loki falls from the Bifrost, but I'm incorporating a few things from Thor 2 into it so for anyone who hasn't seen it yet there may be a spoiler or two. There probably won't be many though since I'm kind of putting my own twists on everything. Anyway, I've ranted enough so I'll just get to the story :3.**

**Italics are flashbacks, the parts in parenthesis are Loki's thoughts, and quotes are dialogue. This applies to all chapters.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Loki or the Avengers or anything else in the Marvel universe.**

**Prologue**

Falling. No light, no sound, no air, nothing but empty darkness as he slipped through the cracks of Yggdrasil to be forgotten among the stars, just another speck of dust adrift in the vast cosmos of the infinite universe.

The fallen Prince, traitor of Asgard. A Jotun. A monster. Would they even mourn?

Loki blinked open his luminescent emerald eyes, though it didn't make much of a difference with the inky blackness all around him.

_I could have done it Father! For you, for all of us! No Loki._

How long had it been since he had let go? It felt like only days but it could have been years for all he knew. He had lost count some time ago and he found he no longer cared.

He was about to allow his eyes to close and his mind to drift off again when a flicker of even thicker darkness moved in the corners of his vision. Vaguely curious as to how that could be, he turned his head slightly, the muscles in his neck stiff from disuse.

It writhed and coiled like a thousand snakes moving to music only they could hear; a fluid, viscous substance that seemed to expand as he watched. As if by some compulsion and not of his own will, he lifted a pale, elegant hand and reached out to it.

It responded instantly and his mouth parted slightly in a soundless scream as it wrapped around his arm and then around the rest of his body, a smothering blanket of liquid black smoke that poured into him, filling his body with a dark power beyond even his wildest dreams, a power too terrible for his worst nightmares. He thrashed and arched his back in pain, clawing at it with trembling fingers, trying to tear it away from him. He had read stories about this power in forbidden books of dark magic he had stolen from the palace's Great Library once as a young boy, not out of any ill intentions, but out of an insatiable curiosity to learn everything he could about the universe around him. It was known as the Aether, a living parasitic energy that took over a host and could destroy entire worlds, thought to have been destroyed in a war between Asgard and the Dark Elves millennia ago. Apparently that was yet another lie in the long list that was his life. Had anything he had ever known been true?

Drawn to the raw magic coursing through his veins and the darkness in his heart, it had chosen him as its unwilling host. It bound to his magic, his very soul, infecting the pure green light with murky tendrils of black and red.

As he felt the last of his strength leave him and his body go limp, he begged for death to claim him, but death would be too sweet a mercy for one such as him.

His eyes went as dark as the void around him and in his mind's eye he saw the destruction of the Nine Realms and Yggdrasil itself one by one. Was this a vision of what was to come? Would he be responsible for such a catastrophe?

(Where did it all go so wrong? Mother, Thor… forgive me.)

A pang of deep regret at the memories of his family that weren't his family pierced his frozen and shattered heart before his eyes returned to their usual gemstone brilliance and slowly shut, everything simply fading away.

Unbeknownst to the now unconscious god, the world around him suddenly burst into vivid color and sound, air whooshing around his rapidly descending form.

He was nothing more than another falling star on an aimless trajectory, destined to blaze with beautiful light until the fire died and exposed the cold lifeless rock it truly was.

* * *

Meanwhile, at SHIELD headquarters, location: classified…

A young and eager intern sipped his cup of coffee and watched the banks of monitors showing various SHIELD research locations that he had been instructed to keep an eye on in case of any strange anomalies. He would later swear he only turned away for a few seconds and that there had been no signs of anything unusual happening on the screens and no weird readings had been detected either.

When he looked again he nearly spit out his drink and hurriedly pushed the button for the intercom.

On one screen showing the very same desert in New Mexico where only three months ago Thor had crashed to earth and changed everything, what appeared to be a bright green comet streaked across the cloudless azure sky and collided with the ground with a loud bang, filling the whole screen with blinding light that soon faded to reveal an astonishing sight.

"Director, I think you're going to want to see this." he said in an awed voice.

**What do you think so far? I'm actually working on the first official chapter now, so the next part should be up soon. This is just a rough draft that came straight out of my head and I might edit some things later on, but I hope it was alright. It's a new idea so bear with me. Please review because it helps encourage me to write :D. **


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